


Deny Everything

by ohsocyanide



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch, Eventual Smut, F/F, Secret Relationship, Venice Incident
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 02:39:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohsocyanide/pseuds/ohsocyanide
Summary: Moira raised her chin slightly, gaze never wavering from the faces of her superiors. “Dr. Ziegler has been compromised,” she said—simply, matter-of-fact. Her trysts with Angela were perhaps one of the best-kept secrets in the entire organization; outside of one or two trusted allies—Jesse McCree being one of those—no one knew.No one needed to know, as far as Moira was concerned.“What do you mean, compromised?” Jack Morrison’s expression hardened. His gaze flickered to Gabriel, seeking clarification. When he found none there, he looked back to Moira.Moira, never one to squirm, shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The resounding silence told him everything he needed to know.Jack breathed out, hard, and shook his head, looking away. “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me, O’Deorain.”Moira cast her gaze downwards for the briefest of seconds before checking Gabriel’s reaction. His own expression was carefully schooled, impassive and unimpressed. “Well?” she said. “What do we do about this?”Jack leaned forward, planting his hands on the surface of the table and leveling Moira with a glare. “You’re the scientist,” he spat. “Uncompromise her.”





	Deny Everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antivanarmada](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antivanarmada/gifts).



The hotel room, Angela supposed, was nice enough.

It should have been. Sequestered away with no phone, no Internet, and no access to so much as a television, the least the United Nations could have done was put them up somewhere nice. When they’d informed Jack of the investigation being launched against Overwatch, that was the only point of negotiation: if his agents were to be locked in hotel rooms for an undetermined amount of time while they awaited interrogation, the United Nations would foot the bill for a nice hotel. It had twenty-four-hour room service and a massage parlor; on her way into the lobby, Angela had seen a gym entryway and a sign for a pool.

Had Angela and the other members of Overwatch been allowed to leave their rooms, they might have even used those amenities.

There were too many of them—too many powerful individuals congregated on the campus of a single hotel—and separating them was top priority. The higher-ups handling the investigation had theorized that if the team wasn’t together, if their movements were restricted to the point of suffocation, then they couldn’t align stories. Someone would get confused, caught up in a lie they didn’t quite understand, and the thread—already dangling, loose from the fabric and prime for pulling—would slowly, surely begin to unravel.

No one was allowed to leave their rooms. Their phones, laptops, and tablets had been confiscated to keep internal communications at a minimum. Someone had intercepted Lena and Mei communicating by tapping out Morse code on the wall separating their suites; every member now had at least one civilian room separating them from each of the others. The televisions had been removed from the rooms so that they were unable to see news coverage of what had quickly been coined as the Venice Incident. Someone somewhere thought seeing right-wing coverage of the mission would impede the interrogation in some way; Angela would have argued that point.

The entire incident had wrecked their organization; no amount of news coverage could alter or change that. They were rats in cages, foxes trapped by hungry hounds, and Angela had never felt more powerless in her life.

 

All she could do was remain seated in her hotel room and order the most expensive dessert items off the menu while she waited.

 

It didn’t matter that guards were posted at each of the exits, that there were cameras trained on her door and specific instructions regarding what to do if, God forbid, a member _went rogue._ No one came or went unless accompanied by an officer; Angela wasn’t concerned with that. She knew without a doubt that she would be receiving a visitor—it was only a matter of _when_.

 

She normally didn’t expect the visits.

 

She had done everything she knew to hash out some sort of pattern, yet there was none to be found. The visits were, Angela theorized, carefully plotted out to make it look as though they weren’t planned at all. Still, Angela didn’t need to keep a calendar to know which dates specifically the visits fell on; she knew them by heart. Sometimes they came multiple times a week; other times she went months without so much as a single communication from her visitor. Angela supposed that was the point: if the movements couldn’t be tracked even by the person receiving the visits, how could they be tracked by any outsiders with a keen enough eye to see the action at all?

 

Try as she may, there was no pattern to be found, no sense to be made in the irregularity with which Moira O’Deorain’s shadow fell upon her doorstep.

 

People weren’t supposed to know about the visits. They weren’t supposed to know about the long nights and the early mornings, the brief pre-assignment trysts, kisses and laughter off-color texts that sent pink flushing up Angela’s cheeks.

 

It was safer that way, she knew.

 

She hadn’t believed that in the beginning. She fought like hell to convince Moira that she didn’t _care._ Angela was happy on the frontlines: saving lives, changing the course of fate, cheating death time and again. She wasn’t afraid of losing whatever reputation she had; her actions spoke for themselves.

 

Overwatch’s reputation had been on the backslide for months now. What did it matter if people knew? Why should that change anything about Angela’s work in Overwatch? She’d stopped arguing that point months ago. Moira wanted things kept quiet; if things weren’t quiet, then there would be no visits at all. It was for _Angela’s own good_. Angela figured it had little to do with the state of her reputation and more to do with the self-importance and priority placed upon _work_ and _science,_ but she didn’t voice those thoughts. Instead, she accepted the visits as they came. She knew not to ask for more than what Moira could give; in return, Moira respected Angela’s boundaries and knew well enough to pull away when she sensed Angela was falling in too deep.

 

And now? Now, she was halfway through the room service dessert menu and waiting patiently for the one and only visit she knew would come.

 

This visit would come tonight because Moira wanted insurance. She wanted the guarantee that Angela wouldn’t crack beneath the pressure of whatever the United Nations would do; she needed to verify that both Angela and her work were safe from compromise.

 

Angela was slated to be interrogated tomorrow; if Moira didn’t visit tonight, then she was out of time.

 

The schedule of interrogations had, for the most part, been kept quiet. Angela was only privy to the date and time of her own questioning because she’d been given a one-way train ticket to Gothenburg with strict instructions. Get on the train, meet Ingrid at the station, and consider the trip an extended vacation. She was not to return to the Oslo facility until she received a call from Jack; if she got bored of Gothenburg, transportation to Nepal could be arranged.

 

The more romantic part of Angela liked to think that Moira would visit tonight because she missed her, because whatever happened in Venice had been a close call and Moira knew that Angela had been the first to suit up and demand that an aircraft drop her in the midst of the action. She’d shown her hand with that. They hadn’t gotten a proper goodbye beforehand—Angela had been angry over the mission; she disagreed with the notion of _more_ bloodshed and warfare after the Oslo attacks—and the night before Moira left, she’d stormed out of a last-minute visit because Angela had wanted to argue.

 

They hadn’t spoken since.

 

After the words that had been exchanged that night, Moira didn’t have to come. She likely didn’t want to and she certainly didn’t need to; she owed little to Angela in the way of guarantee or protection. Angela would keep her secrets; had Moira not trusted Angela, she never would have begun an affair with her. This was, for all intents and purposes, a matter of sentimentality and concern.

 

Angela was halfway through her second pot of tea and a piece of _getränkte_ _zitronencake_ when a key card was jammed into the slot on the door and Moira O’Deorain slipped inside, head down, and locked the door firmly behind her.

 

Angela dropped her teacup and very nearly choked on her cake in surprise

 

Moira looked as good as she always did: impeccable Theory suit clean and sharp, black jacket hanging open to reveal a white dress shirt unbuttoned low enough to parenthesize the valley between her breasts. The skin was perfect, unmarked; Angela could count the bones of her chest in the dim light spilling through the entryway of her hotel room. Angela knew what that skin tasted like, knew that if she were to press her mouth to that sacred spot where Moira’s breasts dipped together it would taste like bergamot and tangerines—contradicting, sharp-sweet and elegant, a hint of spice and the delicious perfume of Moira below all that.

 

She certainly didn’t look as though she’d been slipping in and out of hovels, head down, pretending to be anyone but the brilliant woman she was. Angela couldn’t imagine that a woman on the run from the United Nations would be wearing a pair of Louboutins and a suit with a four-digit price tag, but stranger things had happened, had they not? Had Moira and Angela not inevitably come together time and again, like the sea meeting the tide?

 

Collecting herself, Angela unfolded her legs from beneath her and stood, brushing the crumbs from her fingers with a napkin. “Please,” she said, tone conversational and light, “let yourself in.”

 

Moira cocked her head at Angela and smiled slightly, shifting the black leather bag she was holding from one hand to the other. “We scrambled the cameras for around ten seconds at a time; it was all we could manage without alerting security to a breach in the system. Waiting for you to answer the door would have been a little risky, don’t you think?”

 

“Oh, of course.” Angela stopped a few paces from Moira and crossed her arms over her chest. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I know how you hate taking risks.”

 

The expression on Moira’s face softened slightly. She reached forward and tucked a piece of hair behind Angela’s ear, fingers lingering at the soft line of her neck. “For you, I do,” she murmured, then: “Venice was a necessary risk. If Jack asked you to go on a potentially dangerous mission, would you tell him no because _I_ didn’t agree with it?”

 

The answer was quick to Angela’s tongue—instinctual, automatic. _No_. Lives needed to be saved. There was work to be done; if anyone in Overwatch would be sent out on the frontlines of a major battle, it would be Angela.

 

Everyone knew that.

 

“About Venice,” Angela began, “I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry. For the things that were said, for how the evening ended. I was afraid. After Oslo and the other attacks…”

 

Moira gestured with her free hand, a slashing motion that effectively cut Angela’s apology off. “What’s done is done, Petal. We made it out, and now we deal with the consequences.”

 

Angela looked up, into Moira’s eyes. “And that’s what this is? Dealing with the consequences?”

 

Dark eyes flashed intent and hungry across the lines of Angela’s body. She was suddenly aware of her own state of dress: a simple silk housecoat cinched at the waist and nothing underneath, feet bare and her toes a pale pink from where Mei had painted them the week before. She was underdressed, that much was clear.

 

“I’m here for a few reasons,” Moira began, “the first being that I missed you. There’s no guarantee on when or _if_ I’ll be able to resurface; I didn’t want to disappear without saying goodbye. I’m also here to take a few precautionary measures regarding your questioning tomorrow morning.” Moira lifted the black leather bag as if that held all the explanation Angela required.

 

Angela eyed the bag doubtfully, anxiety welling in her gut. Something deep inside told her this wouldn’t be a cut-and-dry conversation; there was something in the bag Moira had never discussed with Angela before.  _Deny everything._ That had always been the plan for if things went south. What had Moira done? What was she going to do? Why, suddenly, did she not trust Angela to hold her tongue during interrogations?

 

_Deny everything._

 

It would hurt, but Angela could do it—had done, before.

 

Sensing Angela's trepidation, Moira murmured, “I need you to trust me, Petal,” voice low and soothing.

 

Angela didn’t know if she could.

 

All Angela really knew was that Gabriel didn’t want Moira’s work being questioned—not when people were claiming she was  _this_ close to a breakthrough—and so the moment it was revealed that Overwatch had allied itself with her, she had all but fallen off the face of the earth. Gabriel didn’t want Moira being detained, and Moira didn’t want to be the cause of Angela’s own fall from grace. She didn’t want anything Angela had learned over the past few years to be used against her. It was too dangerous—for the work, for Moira, for _Angela_ —and Moira had, long ago, made it painfully clear that her top priority was, outside of her research, keeping Angela’s reputation safely intact.

 

This—whatever was in that bag, whatever was worth Moira risking interception by the United Nations—was the solution they’d come to in protecting their interests.

 

Angela breathed out through her nose, eyes burning. She knew this was coming. She knew. She knew. “I trust you,” she said finally, voice quiet and unsure and full of the questions she didn’t want to ask aloud. “But this… it’s—it’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”

 

“Oh, Petal,” Moira murmured, face collapsing in something akin to grief. Her brows pulled together, turning up at the center and wrinkling the smooth skin between them. The black leather bag dropped to the floor, contents rustling, and she reached a hand up to cup at Angela’s cheek. “I wouldn’t—everything I have done was to protect you. This is just another one of those measures.”

 

Angela should have known to expect an answer like that. “You didn’t answer me, not in full.” She reached up, pressed her palm against Moira’s hand and held it there against her cheek.

 

Moira stilled. “You want to know if it’s going to hurt me,” she said. Not a question; Moira knew what Angela was asking. Moira took a breath, looked away from Angela’s gaze. She slipped her hand from beneath Angela’s and shoved it into her trouser pocket. A clock chimed distantly in the background, signaling the turning of the hour. Angela counted the chimes ringing across the city, listened as it passed from seven to nine to eleven.

 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Moira answered:

 

“More than you’d think.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> to my best friend, fic wife, and soulmate antivanarmada—thank you for supporting and loving me in the way that only you can. i treasure your friendship and love immeasurably. i love you far more than you'll ever know <3
> 
>  
> 
> come hang on tumblr!
> 
> ohsocyanide.tumblr.com


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